The seventy-hundredth day of February

Mid February is when patience is tested.

Nothing looks ready. The ground is cold but no longer hard. The light has improved just enough to feel like a promise someone might forget to keep. You start noticing small things and resenting them for not adding up to more.

This is usually when people try to hurry things along. They tidy, they plan, they talk about spring as if naming it might make it arrive sooner. There’s a restlessness to the days and certainly a sense that something should be happening by now.

But February isn’t a rehearsal. It’s a holding pattern. Roots are doing their quiet work out of sight. Decisions are being delayed for good reason. The land knows better than to be rushed at this point.

I’ve learned not to ask too much of this stretch of the year. To notice what’s enduring rather than what’s emerging. To let the waiting be part of the work.

Some things grow by effort. Others grow by restraint.

February favours the second kind.